Here Is Lena Dunham's $3.7 Million Book Proposal [UPDATE]

Rich girl Lena Dunham sold a book of "frank and funny advice on everything from sex to eating to traveling to work" to Random House for $3.7 million in October on the strength of an illustrated 66-page proposal. Here it is, weighing in at $56,000 or so per page.

Dunham, a 26-year-old described by Random House as "a rare literary talent," proposed to structure the book as an advice tome in the tradition of Helen Gurley Brown's Having It All. To judge by the proposal—which has been described elsewhere but is published here for the first time—it's more of an invitation to get lost in the mind of a girl who is lost in her own mind. It's basically literary lifecasting: Fully 13% of the proposal's pages are devoted to reproducing a diary Dunham kept of what she ate in 2010. And she intends to devote an as-yet-unwritten chapter to "a collection of emails that screw the pooch, jump the gun, and terrify men." Also, Dunham thinks she has the "beginnings of a FUPA (fat upper pussy area)" and wants to write about that, in her book of advice for women.

Julia Allison eat your heart out.

Here are some sentences you will find in it:

I went to my first Women's Action Coalition meeting at age three.

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of a nauseating and cloying posture of precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.

I've been in therapy since I was seven.

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is revelatory of Dunham's character in that it provides evidence that she has been examining her own thoughts and desires analytically from an absurdly young age. It is also indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.

When I was about nine I developed a terrible fear of being anorexic.

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of Dunham's self-dramatizing narcissism inasmuch as it presents what is obviously a desire for an attention-grabbing condition as a fear of developing said condition. It is also indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.

When I was about nine I wrote a vow of celibacy.... I knew my mother had waited until the summer after she graduated [high school].

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal. It also demonstrates her obsessive and boundaryless relationship with her mother, who is friends with Meryl Streep.

At 24 I felt like an old maid....

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates an oblivious cluelessness about time and its passage.

When I got to college I suddenly had the sense that my upbringing hadn't been very "real."

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates a self-awareness on Dunham's part that the subject of her proposal—herself—was raised in exquisite privilege.

Once I had a vegan dinner party which was chronicled for the style section of the New York Times.

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham was so desperate to have the minutiae of her life—and her dietary choices—validated by cultural arbiters that she participated in coverage of a dinner party by the New York Times. It also demonstrates that she periodically deploys such validation as suits her needs.

Once at poetry camp I saw my friend Joana in a bikini.....

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: Come on. Poetry camp?

I immediately started seeing my mother's nutritionist, Vinnie.

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates, by way of a blithe and effortless reference to her mother's domestic service-provider, that Dunham exists in a navel-gazing bubble of privilege where one's mother simply has a nutritionist.

Every ice pop I ate, every movie I watched, every poem I wrote was tinged with a fearful loss.

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is preposterously hackneyed and demonstrates an "I workshopped it at Oberlin" level of quality that permeates the proposal.

Cassie was a very fat girl we knew who we had nicknamed fat Cassie because she also wasn't that nice.

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham and her friends cruelly mocked a young girl struggling with her weight.

I've never kept a diary, [because] if a girl writes in her diary and no one's there to read it did she really write at all?

Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham is incapable of conceiving a rationale for writing that doesn't serve the goal of drawing attention to herself.

Update: Following the intervention of Harder, we have removed the proposal.